--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------Suicide (1897)

Suicide was Durkheims third book which was published in 1897. In broad
historical terms, there are several reasons why Durkheim took up the theme of
suicide when he did. First, suicide was a growing social problem in Europe by
1850 and many felt that it was associated with the development of industrial
society. Industrialization had advanced individualism, accelerated social
fragmentation, and weakened the social bonds tying individuals to society. Second,
industrial society had made economic institutions dominant over other social
institutions and this served to place individual self-interest and economic gain over
the collective forces of society. As individual autonomy and political freedoms
increased, the individual became the center of social life and this served to reduce
the level of social restraint and to call into question the nature of collective social
purposes. Third, the political crisis of the Dreyfus affair in 1894 was a serious
blow to French national unity and drew attention to how much social
fragmentation and egoistic forces had replaced the collective authority of society.
This led Durkheim to believe that the theme of social dissolution brought about by
industrial society could be examined sociologically by looking at the mechanisms
in society which link individuals to social purposes outside themselves. Fourth,
factual evidence made available by comparative mortality data from different
societies linked suicide to social factors such as industrial change, occupation,
family life and religion, and this served to focus attention on society and social
institutions rather than on complex psychological factors. Durkheim found that the
statistical data contained in the records of suicidal deaths for the period could be
categorized according to age, religion, sex, occupation, military service and marital
status, and this led directly to a search for the role played by social factors in the
cause of suicide. Overall, Durkheim studied the records of 26,000 suicides, and his
colleague, Marcel Mauss, helped assemble the maps contained in the study and
aided in compiling the statistical tables on suicidal deaths relating to age and
marital status.
One of the primary aims Durkheim had in pursuing a social theory of suicide
was to look for the social causes of suicide within the existing framework of
society rather than looking at the psychological states of individuals who take their
own lives. This shift in perspective from a psychological to a sociological theory of
suicide was disconcerting for many, and perhaps the best way to understand this
shift is to look at the problem of suicide prior to Durkheims work. At the time
Durkheim began his study, suicide was largely treated as a nervous disorder and its
causes were believed to derive from the psychological states of individuals. Many
believed that suicide was the result of mental illness, depression, sudden tragedy,
reversal of fortune and even personal setbacks and bankruptcy. In this light, suicide
was seen by many as the result of a weak disposition and a psychological response
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------to the burdens of life. Durkheim, however, called these views into question by
shifting the focus from individual motives and psychological states to social causes
in at least two distinct ways. First, by stating that the social causes of suicide
precede individual causes, Durkheim eliminated the need to look at the various
forms suicide assumed in individuals, including depression, personal setbacks, and
psychiatric disorders. Second, in focusing his attention on the various social
environments to which the individual was connected, including the family group,
the religious group and the national group, Durkheim eliminated the necessity of
looking at individual disposition or personality. He put this clearly when he
pointed out that the causes of death are outside rather than within us, and are
effective only if we venture into their sphere of activity.
Durkheim defined Suicide as all cases of death resulting directly or
indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will
produce this result.
Suicide is cited as a monumental landmark in which conceptual theory and
empirical research are brought together. He used considerable statistical ingenuity
considered remarkable for his times. His use of statistical analysis was for two
primary reasons: (1) to refute theories based on psychology, biology, genetics,
climatic, and geographical factors, and (2) to support with empirical evidence his
own sociological explanation of suicide. In this study, Durkheim displayed an
extreme form of sociological realism. He speaks of suicidal currents as collective
tendencies that dominate some very susceptible individuals and catch them up in
their sweep. The act of suicide at times, Durkheim believed, is interpreted as a
product of these currents. Durkheim rejected the various extra-social factors such
as heredity, climate, mental alienation, racial characteristics and imitation as the
cause of suicide and arrived at the conclusion that suicide which appears to be a
phenomenon relating to the individual is actually explicable aetiologically with
reference to the social structure and its ramifying functions which may (a) induce,
(b) perpetuate, or (c) aggravate the suicide potential.
Durkheims central thesis is that suicide rate is a factual order, unified and
definite, for each society has a collective inclination towards suicide, a rate of selfhomicide which is fairly constant for each society so long as the basic conditions
of its existence remain the same. No complete understanding of Durkheims
assertion that suicide had social causes is possible without looking at the concept
of the social suicide rate. Durkheim arrived at the concept of the social suicide
rate after a careful examination of the mortality data which had been obtained from
public records of societies such as France, Germany, England, Denmark and
Austria. These records contained information about cause of death, age, marital
background, religion and the total number of deaths by suicide of the country from
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------which they were gathered. The social suicide rate, therefore, was a term used by
Durkheim to refer to the number of suicidal deaths in a given society and the extent
to which the suicide rates themselves could be looked upon as establishing a
pattern of suicide for a given society. But, what does this mean in relation to
individual suicide? As we stated earlier, theories of suicide prevalent at the time
had looked at individual motives and psychological causes. Suicide, many
believed, was the desperate act of an individual who did not care to live or who
could not face lifes burdens. From this perspective, suicide was seen as an
individual act dependent on factors which could only be explained psychologically.
Durkheim, however, took a completely different approach. Rather than
looking at individual motives or psychological states, he began by looking at the
social suicide rate that existed in different countries. What he wanted to find out
was whether individual suicides committed in a given society could be taken
together as a whole and studied collectively. Durkheims central question then was
can the collective rates for a given society be studied independently of individual
suicide? In order, therefore, to establish a theoretical footing, Durkheim began to
look at the total number of suicidal deaths contained in public records of countries
such as France, Germany, England and Denmark. The suicide rates for these
countries had been collected between 1841 and 1872, and they contained a
substantial amount of information related to social factors of suicide such as
marital status, religion, occupation and military service.
After studying the rates, Durkheim made several key observations. First, he
noticed that the rates varied from society to society. For example, they were higher
in Germany in comparison to Italy; lower in Denmark in comparison to England
and so on. Second, he observed that between 1841 and 1872, the number of
suicidal deaths in each of the countries did not change dramatically and were
considered to be stable. For example, between 1841-42 the number of suicidal
deaths in France were 2814 and 2866 respectively; whereas in Germany for the
same years they were 1630 and 1598. As far as Durkheim was concerned, the
stability of the rates within a given society was crucial since it meant that each
society not only produced a quota of suicidal deaths but that certain social forces
were operating to produce what Durkheim saw as the yearly precision of rates.
This turned out to be decisive because when considered collectively, the rates
pointed in the direction of underlying social causes. This led Durkheim to reason
that the predisposing cause of suicide lay not within the psychological motives of
the individual but within the social framework of society. Third, the observed
stability of the rates meant that each society was a distinct social environment with
different social characteristics, different religions, different patterns of family life,
different military obligations and thus different suicide characteristics. Under these
circumstances, each produced rate of suicidal deaths distinct from the other.
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------Fourth, when compared to the mortality rate, Durkheim noticed that the suicide
rate demonstrated a far greater consistency than did the general mortality rate,
which fluctuated randomly.
As a result, Durkheim drew three fundamental conclusions which turned on
the question of the stability of the rates. First, he believed that the stability of the
rates showed that, while individual motives for suicide vary from case to case, the
regularity exhibited by the social suicide rate was consistently stable. Second,
though the rates varied between societies, the stability of the rates within a
particular society meant that each society produces a quota of suicidal deaths.
Third, Durkheim took the position that the social suicide rate must represent a
factual order that is separate from individual disposition and, therefore, he
thought it had a regularity which could be studied in its own right. In that the
social suicide rate is independent of individual suicide and has a stability of its
own, it should therefore be the subject of a special study whose purpose would be
to discover the social causes leading to a definite number of people that take their
own lives in a given society.
Durkheim believed that the social suicide rate was the clearest evidence he
had for a social theory of suicide since what a study of the social suicide rate had
established was that different societies had different suicide rates, and that these
rates changed very little over time within any given society. For example, between
1841 and 1842 France had 2866 suicides while Germany had 1598 suicides. He
went on to reason that if suicide were entirely the result of individual causes and
individual psychology, it would be difficult to explain why the French would be
almost twice as likely to commit suicide in comparison with the Germans.
Durkheim then reasoned that once we shift the focus from the study of individual
suicides to the study of the collective suicide rate Frances suicide rate in
relation to Germanys suicide rate it became apparent that the collective rates
pointed in the direction of underlying social causes, which in turn indicated
fundamental differences in the social framework that caused France to have 2866
suicides each year, while Germany had only 1598.
Durkheims theory of suicide is divided into two explanatory sections. In the
first, Durkheim explains suicide by drawing on the concept of social integration,
referring to the strength of the social bonds existing between the individual and
society. In this case, egoistic and altruistic suicide form opposite poles of social
integration. In the second part of the theory, Durkheim explained suicide by
drawing on the concept of social regulation. Social regulation, in contrast to
integration, refers to the restraints imposed by society on individual needs and
wants and generally manifests itself through regulatory requirements that are
imposed by society on individuals when their social needs and wants begin to
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------exceed the means they have for attaining them. In the case of social regulation,
anomic and fatalistic suicide form opposite poles in relation to the changes in the
regulatory functions of industrial society that may lead to shifts in the suicide rate.
Let us now discuss about these types of suicide in detail.
Egoistic Suicide: Egoistic suicide results from the lack of integration of the
individual into his social group. Durkheim studied varying degrees of integration
of individuals into their religion, family, political and national communities, and
found that the stronger the forces throwing the individuals on to their own
resources, the greater the suicide rate in society. For example, regardless of race
and nationality, Catholics show far less suicides than Protestants. This is because,
while both faiths prohibit suicide, Catholicism is able to integrate its members
more fully into its fold. Protestantism fosters spirit of free inquiry, permits greater
individual freedom, multiplies schism, lacks hierarchic organizations and has fewer
common beliefs and practices. Catholicism, on the other hand, is an idealistic
religion which accepts faith readymade, without scrutiny, has a hierarchical system
of authority and prohibits variation. Thus the superiority of Protestantism with
respect to suicide results from its being a less strongly integrated church than the
Catholic church.
Family, like religious group, is a powerful counter agent against suicide.
Non-marriage increases the tendency to suicide, while marriage reduces the danger
by half or more. This immunity even increases with the density of the family. In
other words, contrary to the popular belief that suicide is due to lifes burdens,
Durkheim insists that it diminishes as these burdens increase. Small families are
unstable and short-lived; their sentiments and consciences lack intensity. But large
families are more solidly integrated and act as powerful safeguards against suicide.
Again, contrary to the common belief that great political upheavals increase the
number of suicides, Durkheim contends that great social disturbances and popular
wars rouse collective sentiments, stimulate patriotism and national faith, and force
men to close ranks and confront the danger, leading to a more powerful integration
of the individual into his community, thus reducing the rate of suicide.
Altruistic Suicide: Altruistic suicide results from the over-integration of the
individual into his social group. An individuals life is so rigorously governed by
custom and habit that he takes his own life because of higher commandments.
Examples are legion: women throwing themselves at the funeral pyre of their
husbands (known as sati in India); Danish warriors killing themselves in old age;
the Goths jumping to their death from high pinnacles to escape the ignominy of
natural death; suicide of followers and servants on the death of their chiefs. As
opposed to these obligatory altruistic suicides, there are optional varieties which do
not require suicide but praise self-sacrifice or ultimate self-renunciation as a noble
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------and praiseworthy act. Japanese Harakiri, self-immolation by Buddhist monks, selfhomicide by army suicide squads and self-destruction in Nirvana under Brahminic
influence (as in the case of ancient Hindu sages) illustrate other variants of
altruistic suicide.
Durkheim believed that his analysis of military suicide lent support to his
conclusion. He rejected the popular conception which attributes military suicide to
the hardships of military life, disciplinary rigor and lack of liberty. While with
longer service men might be expected to become accustomed to barrack life, their
commitment to the army and aptitude for suicide seem to increase. While military
life is much less hard for officers than for private soldiers, the former accounts for
greater suicide rates than the latter. Above all, volunteers and re-enlisted men who
choose military as a career are more inclined to commit suicide than men drafted
against their will. This proves that where altruistic suicide is prevalent, man is
always ready to sacrifice his life for a great cause, principle or a value.

--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------Anomic Suicide: Anomic suicide results from normlessness or deregulation in
society. Although this kind of suicide occurs during industrial or financial crises, it
is not because they cause poverty, since crises of prosperity have the same result,
but because they are crises of the collective order. Every disturbance of social
equilibrium whether on account of sudden prosperity or instant misfortune, results
in a deregulation and a greater impulse to voluntary death. Durkheim attributed
anomic suicide to unlimited aspirations and the breakdown of regulatory norms.
Mans aspirations have consistently increased since the beginnings of history.
There is nothing in mans organic structure or his psychological constitution which
can regulate his overweening ambitions. Social desires can be regulated only by a
moral force. Durkheim views the collective order as the only moral force that can
effectively restrain the social and moral needs. However, occasionally this
mechanism breaks down and normlessness ensues.
Thus any abrupt transitions such as economic disaster, industrial crisis or
sudden prosperity can cause a deregulation of the normative structure. That is why,
Durkheim reasons, anomie is a chronic state of affairs in the modern socioeconomic system. Sudden changes upset the societal scale instantly but a new scale
cannot be immediately improvised. Collective conscience requires time to
reclassify men and things. During such periods of transition there is no restraint on
aspirations which continue to rise unbridled. The state of deregulation or anomie
is thus further heightened by passions being less disciplined, precisely when they
need more disciplining. Overweening ambition and the race for unattainable goals
continue to heighten anomie.
In analyzing the consequences of anomie, Durkheim showed that there was a
high rate of anomic suicide among those who are wealthy as well as among
divorced persons. Sudden upward changes in the standard of living or the breakup
of a marriage throws life out of gear and puts norms in a flux. Like economic
anomie, domestic anomie resulting from the death of husband or wife is also the
result of a catastrophe that upsets the scale of life. Durkheim also points to a
number of factors that contributed to anomie in modern society. Economic
progress has largely freed industrial relations from all regulation, and there is no
moral strong enough to exercise control in the sphere of trade and industry.
Furthermore, religion has lost most of its power. And government, instead of
regulating economic life, has become its tool and servant.
Fatalistic Suicide: There is a little mentioned fourth type of suicide fatalistic
that Durkheim discussed only in a footnote in Suicide. Whereas anomic suicide is
more likely to occur in situations in which regulation is too weak, fatalistic suicide
is more likely to occur when regulation is excessive. While Durkheim had little to
say about the characteristics of fatalistic suicide, he cited as an example the suicide
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------of slaves who, seeing no alternative to life except enslavement under a master, take
their own life.
Thus, to summarise, Durkheim argued that social currents cause changes in
the rates of suicides. Individual suicides are affected by these currents of egoism,
altruism, anomie, and fatalism. This proved, for Durkheim, that these currents are
more than just the sum of individuals, but are sui generis forces, because they
dominate the decisions of individuals. Without this assumption, the stability of the
suicide rate for any particular society could not be explained.
Durkheim concludes his study of suicide with an examination of what
reforms could be undertaken to prevent it. Most attempts to prevent suicide have
failed because it has been seen as an individual problem. For Durkheim attempts to
directly convince individuals not to commit suicide are futile, since its real causes
are in society. Of course, the first question to be asked is whether suicide should be
prevented or whether it counts among those social phenomena that Durkheim
would call normal because of its widespread prevalence. This is an especially
important question for Durkheim because his theory says that suicides results from
social currents that, in a less exaggerated form, are good for society. We would not
want to stop all economic booms because they lead to anomic suicides nor would
we stop valuing individuality because leads to egoistic suicide. Similarly, altruistic
suicide results from our virtuous tendency to sacrifice ourselves for the
community. The pursuit of progress, the belief in the individual, and the spirit of
sacrifice all have their place in society, and cannot exist without generating some
suicides. Durkheim admits that some suicide is normal, but he argues that the
modern society has seen a pathological increase in both egoistic and anomic
suicide. Here his position can be traced back to The Division of Labour, where he
argued that the anomie of modern culture is due to the abnormal way in which
labour is divided so that it leads to isolation rather than interdependence. What is
needed, then, is a way to preserve the benefits of modernity without unduly
increasing suicides a way of balancing these social currents. In our society,
Durkheim believes, these currents are out of balance. In particular, social
regulation and integration are too low, leading to an abnormal rate of anomic and
egoistic suicides.
Many of the existing institutions for connecting the individual and society
have failed, and Durkheim sees little hope of their success. The modern state is too
distant from the individual to influence his or her life with enough force and
continuity. The church cannot exert its integrating effect without at the same time
repressing freedom of thought. Even the family, possibly the most integrative
institution in modern society, will fail in this task since it is subject to the same
corrosive conditions that are increasing suicide. Instead, what Durkheim, suggests
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------is the need of a different institution based on occupational groups. Hence in the
form of occupational associations Durkheim proposes a social solution to a social
problem.
As we discussed above, the primary problem that Durkheim saw in modern
society was the lack of integration and regulation. Even though the cult of the
individual provided a collective representation, Durkheim believed that there was a
lack of social organizations that people could feel part of and that could tell people
what they should and should not do. The modern state is too distant to influence
most individuals. The church tends to integrate people by repressing freedom of
thought. And the family is too particular and does not integrate individuals into
society as a whole. As weve seen, the schools provided an excellent milieu for
children. For adults, Durkheim proposed another institution: the occupational
association. Genuine moral commitments require a concrete group which is tied to
the basic organizing principle of modern society, the division of labour. Durkheim
proposed the development of occupational associations. All the workers, managers,
and owners involved in a particular industry should join together in an association
that would be both professional and social. Durkheim did not believe that there
was a basic conflict of interest among the owners, managers, and workers within
an industry. In this, of course, he took a position diametrically opposed to that of
Marx, who saw an essential conflict of interest between the owners and the
workers. Durkheim believed that any such conflict occurred only because the
various people involved lacked a common morality which was traceable to the lack
of an integrative structure. He suggested that the structure that was needed to
provide this integrative morality was the occupational association, which would
encompass all the agents of the same industry united and organized into a single
group. Such an organization was deemed to be superior to such organizations as
labour unions and employer association, which in Durkheims view served only to
intensify the differences between owners, managers, and workers. Involved in a
common organization, people in these categories would recognize their common
interests as well as their common need for an integrative moral system. That moral
system, with its derived rules and laws, would serve to counteract the tendency
toward atomization in modern society as well as help stop the decline in the
significance of collective morality.
Durkheims analysis has had an enormous influence on all subsequent
research into suicide, and many aspects of his theory have been confirmed by a
number of studies, although many of these have also served to modify the original
theory. Bearing in mind that many of the statistical techniques commonly used
today had not been developed at the time, his statistical approach was very
advanced. Still, he has been criticized both for his social realism perspective as
well as his positivist methodology. In his study of Suicide Durkheim displayed an
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--------------------Aditya Mongra @ Professors Classes-------------------extreme form of social realism and explained suicide as a product of suicidal
currents. However, later day scholars criticized this extreme sociological realism
approach of Durkheim, and rather advocated a more comprehensive causal
pluralism approach to explain the phenomenon of suicide. They argued that apart
from social factors, biological and psychological factors must also be explored
while explaining suicide. Further, British sociologist J. Maxwell Atkinson has
criticized Durkheim on his positivist methodology. Atkinson has raised doubts
over the reliability and validity of the very data used by Durkheim in study of
Suicide. He maintains that the social world is a construction of actors perceptions
and subjective interpretations. As such it has no reality beyond the meanings given
to it by social actors. Thus an act of suicide is simply that which is defined as
suicide by social actors. Certain deaths come to be defined as suicide by coroners
(investigating officers), medical practitioners, newspaper reporters, family and
friends of the deceased and so on. Definitions of suicide depend on their
interpretation of the event. For Atkinson, suicide is not an objective fact rather it is
a subjective interpretation of the coroner. Thus, while some cases of unnatural
death get classified as suicide and others are not, owing to the subjective
interpretation by the coroner.

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